Tuesday, January 15, 2013

Forest City Ratner Needs No Stinkin’ Badges To Rake In Cash From Unauthorized Parking Meters Posing As Legit

This is great. What we have here for you is a story from the Journal News in Yonkers about how Forest City Ratner was reportedly illegally collecting fairly appreciable money for a year and a half (May 2011 until fall 2012) in the form of what were supposedly `meter fees’ and `parking ticket payments’ by running a phony parking meter operation at its Yonkers government-subsidized Ridge Hill project. See: Yonkers officials: Ridge Hill parking meters weren't legal, by Colin Gustafson, Jan 14, 2013.

Forest City Ratner is now in the process of removing the Yonkers meters for which they apparently had absolutely no authority (or that were at very best of “questionable legality”).

Forest City representatives assured Yonkers City Council committee members that it was legal to have the meters, according to a video of the meeting The Journal News reviewed. The Ratner behavioral assumption that everything public, including all the streets around can be treated as the Ratner company’s private property is pretty much the way things are unfolding with the “Barclays” arena “black car” congestion problem that is likely to be solved by dedicating Brooklynite parking space as waiting areas for the private arena.

Above, the green shows where within the 30+ acre Forest City Ratner mega-monopoly (outlined) once-public streets, avenues and sidewalks are now privately owned by Ratner, subject to Ratner rules

I suppose that after a while it just gets really difficult for Forest City Ratner and cohorts to think of themselves as not completely owning all of the public highways and byways. The Atlantic Yards mega-project involves the city giving the company streets, avenues and adjoining sidewalks (Pacific Street, Fifth Avenue and their sidewalks) some of which are being closed down completely and permanently by the real estate firm, some of which will be partly open to the public’s passage through, subject to whatever prerogatives of private ownership these new owners might want to assert. . . And (something not everybody knows) the Ratner organization already owns the once-public Fort Greene Place (between Hanson Place and Atlantic Avenue), another part of the 30+ acres of contiguous mega-monopoly that includes Atlantic Yards, thus making the now private Fort Greene Place subject to different rules and authority from the public streets around it.

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NOTICING NEW YORK & NATIONAL NOTICE are both independent entities managed by Michael D. D. White of Hop-Skip Enterprises. Michael D. D. White is an attorney, urban planner and former government public finance and development official. *** Noticing New York covers New York development and associated politics. National Notice covers national policy and economic issues *** Contact: MichaelDDWhite(at)gmail.com